Star Wars vs. the Needs of Children

by Polly Mann, WAMM

Recently, I read a letter to the editor of the Minneapolis Spokesman from Peggy Watkins. Watkins wrote of her experiences trying to provide food and shelter for herself and her children, including a six-month old son. Shelter housing was denied Watkins and her family when they exceeded the 60-day occupancy limit. She found a job paying $8.16 per hour and an apartment, but Hennepin County could not help her with the security deposit and first month's rent. Instead of renting the apartment, she ended up living with friends in an effort to save money for housing. Later, she squatted an under-code apartment. Through all these difficulties, she hasn't given up.

The state's response to the special needs of poor mothers as they make the transition from welfare to work is callous. It is as if the state were a parent teaching a child to swim, and the parent's method is to tie together the child's hands and throw her in the water, expecting the shock and danger to induce swimming.

If you listen to our public officials, it seems there just isn't enough money to provide the services to enable mothers to make the leap from welfare to work. This lack of basic help is occurring in an economy heralded everywhere as "booming." But it is not booming for the majority of Americans.

The economy is booming for corporate heads and that small percentage of people at the top of the economic ladder, including the 1% which owns more wealth than the bottom 92% combined. It is not booming for poor mothers and their children.

As the U.S. Congress denies sufficient funds for programs to accommodate the most vulnerable members of our society--poor children--it continues to fund the military in ever greater amounts. The military is being allotted 48 percent, or $627 billion of the discretionary portion of the U.S. budget for the year 2000. But even that is not enough for our current Administration. On the same day that Peggy Watkins, letter was published in the Spokesman, the Administration announced it might go ahead with a national missile defense system--a revamped "star wars" network which would cost taxpayers an additional $10 billion.

I suspect that Peggy Watkins is not too concerned about the "security" offered by the $10 billion missile system. The security she needs is that for her children: beds with clean sheets, cupboards filled with food, immunizations from childhood diseases, and so on. Just who would gain from this revamped "star wars" program? The corporations, that's who.

If enough people cared about the well-being of children (not just their own, but all children) they would demand the programs needed to ensure a future for them. Since the only federal agency with money to burn is the military, they would say to the Administration, forget "star wars" and instead put some stars in the eyes of children by guaranteeing that their basic needs will be met.